Aligning with certain sport, cultural, charity or entertainment events and programs can be an effective, targeted and sometimes more cost effective method of reaching out to consumers. As part of this, consumer activation has long been a key leverage activity for brands looking to get the most out of their sponsorship properties. However in recent years, sponsorship leveraging has expanded on this, with many brands developing activations that stretch well beyond at the event, into the world of social media.
Brands have identified the impact activations can have when not only experienced by those participating but shared amongst their friends and beyond. Below are some case studies of some activations that have successfully integrated social media as part of their sponsorship leverage programs.
The Coca Cola Village
As recently reported on digital buzz, Coca Cola ran a very successful experiential event inIsraelwith the integration of facebook. Across three days, thousands of teens attended the Coca Cola Village, a fun and exciting space with all sorts of entertainment including sporting activities, music and general fun in the sun. All attendees were issued with a wristband which securely contained their facebook login and password details. Once inside, every time they went on to a new activity, they scanned their wristband which instantly updated their status to tell their friends whatever it was they were doing. Additionally, attendees could automatically tag themselves in photos using their wristband.
The results:
Over 100,000 status updates on facebook – all generated from an event that only had 1950 attendees!
adidas all in challenge
Early in 2011, adidas launched a huge marketing campaign…adidas is all in. As part of it, they created the adidas all in challenge, which saw six teams of three battle it out to win an amazing prize, including a trip to LA to see Katy Perry and the LA Galaxy. The teams battled across Aussie Rules, skateboarding, basketball, football, dance and art for 60-hours non-stop and accrued the most ‘likes’ on their facebook team profile page to win the grand prize. With three teams remaining at the end of 60 hours, it came down to the number of facebook likes each team had received for their team on the facebook fan page resulting in significant traffic on facebook for the campaign.
The results:
15,000 facebook ‘likes’ and numerous celebrity tweets from adidas ambassadors.
- Dance and art contestants only 5.5 minutes into the 60 hour challenge
I would love to hear YOUR thoughts on these two activations – did you like it…? Do you think they could have been done better?
The Sport of Social Media 
You blog about sport and social media is a great and interesting read. Coming from the fashion retail industry it is refreshing to hear about how it can be applied to other areas such as the sporting.
The two case studies you provided being Adidas and Coco Cola “The Coco Cola village” were a fascinating.
I believe the activities they devised were extremely successful and appealing to there customer market based on the fact that The Coco Cola Village received 100,000 hits and the Adidas activity received 15,000 likes that is a great success.
Social Marketing is a great strategy for these two brands based on their customers and there behaviours regarding Facebook, Twitter ect.
As mentioned in your blog Social Media is extremely successful based on the fact it targets a large amount of people for next to nothing $.
Creating activities like the ones in your case studies appeal largely to there direct target customers. These people are extremely internet savy and are all over social sites. One of the largest success activities to come out of social marketing is “Flash Mob” which is a random act devised by a company in a public place that creates shock value to people. There are some great examples if you google it.
Greta blog topic really enjoyed reading it there is so much research to suggest that this is definitely the way for the future for all businesses that have this target market.